Having thus shown the chapman’s descent, it will be interesting to notice the origin of the name given to his profession, if it may be so called. Professor Fraser says ‘the prefix “chap” originally meant “to cheap or cheapen,” as in the word “cheapening-place,” meaning a market-place,—hence the English Cheapside and Eastcheap.’ In addition, it may be stated that the word ‘chapman’ is derived from the Anglo-Saxon “ceap-man,” ceap meaning ‘a sale, or bargain’; and it is related to the Suio-Gothic or Swedish keop-a, whence is derived the Scottish ‘coup’ or ‘cowp,’ now confined to horse-selling, colloquially spoken of as ‘horse-cowping.’ Another illustration may be found in the name ‘Chepstow,’ a place in Monmouthshire, meaning a market, or place for chapmen. The general title of ‘chap-books’ was given to small tracts hawked through the country by these worthies, who, however, were willing to sell anything upon which they could make a profit. Their business was a necessity of the times, when roads were bad, when stage-coaches were hardly known, and when railways would have been thought an impossibility and absurdity. The people in the rural districts bought all their smallwares from them; and the visit of the chapman to a remote Lowland village, or Highland clachan, was an event to be remembered by the women-folks far and near.
When and how the chap-literature of Scotland took its origin it would be difficult to say with anything like precision. There is, however, good ground for the assumption that it may have originated about the period of the Covenanting troubles, and that it probably received its first material impetus from the Revolution of 1688. As early as 1644, Zachary Boyd, for some time minister of the Barony Parish of Glasgow, and Vice-Chancellor of the University, complained to the General Assembly about the ‘idle books, ... fables, love-songs, baudry ballads, heathen husks, youth’s poison,’ in circulation. Printing was then in its infancy in Scotland, and it is interesting to note how, thus early in its existence, it sought to extend to the people a cheap literature which, though perhaps not of the most wholesome kind, might hardly be deserving of the strictures of the stern presbyterian of the seventeenth century. After the Restoration, a change appears to have come over the popular literature; a new element was introduced; and the internal evidence of the chap-books relating to Peden, Cargill, and other worthies of the ‘killing time,’ indicate that their first editions were published within a few years at least of the events recorded in them. The press, apparently, was made great use of by the preachers who had been ousted from their pulpits; and many sermons were sent out in the form of chap-books. In the second portion of the library of the late Dr. David Laing, which was recently sold off in London, there was an interesting volume of chap-books relating chiefly to Scottish religious and ecclesiastical affairs. Among others, it included the following:—‘Renwick (J.), Man’s Great Concernment, 1687’; ‘Love (C.), Christ’s Glorious Appearance, Glasgow, 1692’; and ‘Row (J.), Sermon commonly known by the Pockmanty Preaching, Edin., 1723.’ From what has been said, there seems to be little doubt that the chap-literature of Scotland was of somewhat earlier origin than that of England. A recent writer, referring to English chap-books, says:—‘The Chap-book proper did not exist before the former date [1700], unless the Civil War and political tracts can be so termed. Doubtless these were hawked by the pedlars, but they were not those penny worths, suitable to everybody’s taste, and within the reach of anybody’s purse, owing to their extremely low price, which must, or ought to have, extracted every available copper in the village, when the Chapman opened his budget of brand-new books.’[36]
But happier times produced a further change on Scottish chap-literature, which again included within its borders productions of a less sober character than sermons and the lives and opinions of martyrs, though these still held their ground in public estimation. Among the chaps, the originals or early reprints of which were published at the beginning of the eighteenth century, were many of a religious or semi-religious character, such as the following:—‘Last Words of Christian Kerr, Edin., 1708’; ‘Description of Jerusalem, Edin., 1727’; and ‘Last Words of Margaret Abercromby, Edin., 1729.’ As for the ‘Pockmanty Preaching,’ already mentioned as having been issued in 1723, it was one of a considerable class which has been well represented in Scottish Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed. About this time, also, Allan Ramsay published many of his earlier poems in chap-book or broadside form, and to this must be attributed the speedy hold he took on the favour of the people. Chalmers, in his life of the poet, says that after the year 1715, Ramsay ‘wrote many petty poems, which from time to time he published at a proportionate price. In this form, his poetry was at the time attractive; and the women of Edinburgh were wont to send out their children, with a penny, to buy “Ramsay’s last piece.” ... On those principles he published, about the year 1716, the “Christ’s Kirk on the Green.”’[37] Though he did not long continue this practice, he had afterwards to suffer some annoyance by others doing it for him. In his ‘Address to the Town Council of Edinburgh,’ written in 1721, he complains that he had ‘suffer’d muckle wrang’ by ‘Lucky Reid and ballad-singers,’ publishing a trashy edition of his pastoral on Addison. He bewails the many mistakes in it, and says that publication kept him from his natural rest.
The ‘Lucky Reid,’ mentioned in Ramsay’s complaint, was the widow of John Reid, printer, in Bell’s Wynd, Edinburgh. Reid did a large business in issuing scraps of popular literature. He was the original publisher of many of the strange productions of William Mitchell, alias ‘The Tinclarian Doctor;’ an odd being who sought by his works to spread ‘light’ throughout Scotland. Mitchell was a lamplighter in Edinburgh for twelve years, but, losing this situation, he got, as he says himself, ‘an inward call from the Spirit, to give light to the ministers.’ His works may be classed among the chap-books of Scotland, for, though he sold them himself, and did not allow them to be retailed by the chapmen, they are of the same description.
Great activity in the publication of chap-books is known to have been displayed by printers in the various cities and towns in Scotland for the next decade or two; though, as far as can be judged from the few remnants of their productions still to be found, there was no author who, in any way, marked the literature with his individuality. Small collections of songs seem to have been in great request; old ballads were reprinted, and extracts were made from the writings of many of the poets; and the chap literature of England, which by this time had attained to some maturity, was beginning to make an impression on the Scottish people. Dream-books, and small works relating to astrology, palmistry, physiognomy, foreign travel, and such like, had become common, and were hailed by the people with manifest delight. These publications, issued at a price which put them within the reach of all classes, served to keep alive the superstitious beliefs which to this day are by no means eradicated from the popular mind, and which occasionally show themselves in most unlooked for quarters, and under the most extraordinary circumstances. Even the semi-religious chap-books had a tendency in this direction; and the so-called prophecies of the leaders in the Covenanting movement were regarded as certain of fulfilment, each change being eagerly watched and noticed as having a bearing upon the utterance of some martyr to the unholy zeal of the persecutors. As the general prophecies of Thomas the Rhymer, the seer of Ercildoune, were regarded as finding their fulfilment in the political events of the time; as the prophecies of Mother Shipton have recently been scanned, and even caused agitation among a nervous few, on account of the prediction—
‘The world to an end shall come,
In eighteen hundred and eighty-one’;
so were the sayings of Peden, Cargill, and others, believed to be finding their realisation in the many actual and supposed calamities that every now and then occurred within the land for which they had suffered so much. An interesting notice of the power of these books is furnished by the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, minister of Inveresk, in the middle of last century:—‘In the month of March or April this year [1744], having gone down [from Glasgow] with a merchant to visit New Port-Glasgow, as our dinner was preparing at the inn, we were alarmed with the howling and weeping of half-a-dozen of women in the kitchen, which was so loud and lasting that I went to see what was the matter, when, after some time, I learnt from the calmest among them that a pedlar had left a copy of Peden’s Prophecies that morning, which having read part of, they found that he had predicted woes of every kind to the people of Scotland; and in particular that Clyde would run with blood in the year 1744, which now being some months advanced, they believed that their destruction was at hand. I was puzzled how to pacify them, but calling for the book, I found that the passage which had terrified them was contained in the forty-fourth paragraph, without any allusion whatever to the year; and by this means I quieted their lamentations. Had the intended expedition of Mareschal Saxe been carried into execution that year, as was intended, their fears might have been realised.’[38] An instance of the supposed fulfilment of a prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer, about this date, may be cited from Dougal Graham’s History of the Rebellion. Referring to Prestonpans, and after describing the battle fought there on the 21st of September, 1745, between the clans under Prince Charlie and the troops under Sir John Cope, he says:—
‘The place old Rhymer told long before,